Is "who're" a legitimate contraction of "who are" that I can use in informal writing?
who're
No. "Who're" is not one of the standard contractions found in English writing, and regardless, I think it's unwarranted as a contraction. "Who're" implies that the word (like "we're" or "they're") would be pronounced as one syllable - something like [hUr\] or [hur\], and I don't think many people would pronounce that way. Even in the most rapid speech I say "who are" [hu @`], and uncontracted "are" is regularly read as [@`] in connected speech.
So I think "who're" is unwarranted for the same reason that the (sometimes seen, nonstandard) contraction "would've" is unwarranted: uncontracted "have" is already regularly read as [@v] in connected speech, and I can guarantee you that people are saying [wUd@v] or [w@d@v] and not the monosyllabic and unpronounceable [wUdv] (in contrast with monosyllabic "I've", "we've"), so the contraction serves no purpose.
So I think "who're" is unwarranted for the same reason that the (sometimes seen, nonstandard) contraction "would've" is unwarranted: uncontracted "have" is already regularly read as [@v] in connected speech, and I can guarantee you that people are saying [wUd@v] or [w@d@v] and not the monosyllabic and unpronounceable [wUdv] (in contrast with monosyllabic "I've", "we've"), so the contraction serves no purpose.
I think you could use it, but I wouldn't, since it looks too much like whore, LOL. And by the way I don't think it's common in written English, but I might be wrong.
I wanted to start a thread about "who're" too, because I am interested in its pronunciation, and the pronunciation of "who" in general.
Who're you? /hʊr/
The man who told me. /hʊ/
Is it so?
I wanted to start a thread about "who're" too, because I am interested in its pronunciation, and the pronunciation of "who" in general.
Who're you? /hʊr/
The man who told me. /hʊ/
Is it so?
And also, since "who're" is rarely if ever seen, people might think you're writing "whore".
<<Who're you? /hʊr/>>
No, I think the pronunciation of "Who are you?" would be [hu @` "ju:]. A monosyllabic "who're" ([hUr\]) sounds quite off to me and I've never heard of anybody using it.
<<The man who told me. /hʊ/>>
I think the reduced form of "who", which would be used here, would just be a short [hu] or [u].
No, I think the pronunciation of "Who are you?" would be [hu @` "ju:]. A monosyllabic "who're" ([hUr\]) sounds quite off to me and I've never heard of anybody using it.
<<The man who told me. /hʊ/>>
I think the reduced form of "who", which would be used here, would just be a short [hu] or [u].
In addition to "who're" looking like "whore", some people pronounce "whore" as "who-er".
>uncontracted "have" is already regularly read as [@v] in connected ?>speech,
So? Of you're wanting to express that the reader should read it as a contraction, then you should write it as a contraction. I don't see what the issue of whether people contract it anyway has to do with it. If I'm transcribing speech, and someone says "would've", I'll write it "would've". "Connected speech" is just a fancy way of saying "contraction".
>and I can guarantee you that people are saying [wUd@v] or [w@d@v] >and not the monosyllabic and unpronounceable [wUdv] (in contrast with >monosyllabic "I've", "we've"), so the contraction serves no purpose.
By that logic, one shouldn't write "wouldn't".
>uncontracted "have" is already regularly read as [@v] in connected ?>speech,
So? Of you're wanting to express that the reader should read it as a contraction, then you should write it as a contraction. I don't see what the issue of whether people contract it anyway has to do with it. If I'm transcribing speech, and someone says "would've", I'll write it "would've". "Connected speech" is just a fancy way of saying "contraction".
>and I can guarantee you that people are saying [wUd@v] or [w@d@v] >and not the monosyllabic and unpronounceable [wUdv] (in contrast with >monosyllabic "I've", "we've"), so the contraction serves no purpose.
By that logic, one shouldn't write "wouldn't".
<<So? Of you're wanting to express that the reader should read it as a contraction, then you should write it as a contraction.>>
As I said above, I doubt that many people are saying a truly monosyllabic [hUr\] analagous to "we're" or "they're".
<<If I'm transcribing speech, and someone says "would've", I'll write it "would've".>>
But there's no difference between saying *"would've" and saying "would have". For example, compare:
1. "I've done that" [aIv "dVn D{t]
2. "The men have done that" [D@ mEn @v "dVn D{t]
In 1., there's a legitimate contraction because "I've" is pronounced as a monosyllable. In 2., "have" would be read by any English speaker as [@v]; there's no possible way that you could have a monosyllable "men've" [mEnv]. This demonstrates that the contraction is used when the predictable reduced pronunciation [@v] is not used. In fact, compare:
1. "I've done that" [aIv "dVn D{t]
2. "I have done that" [aI @v "dVn D{t]
This demonstrates the difference between the regular reduced form [@v] and the contracted form, [v]. And in the case of "would have", it is the predictable reduced form [@v] that is used, *not* the contracted form [v]. No English speaker would pronounce a monosyllable [wUdv], so therefore the contraction serves absolutely no purpose. Or to put it another way, there's a difference in pronunciation between:
1. "I've done that"
2. "I have done that"
But there is no difference in pronunciation between:
1. "I would've done that."
2. "I would have done that."
What I'm trying to show is that the supposed "contracted" form is pronounced identical to the uncontracted form, so therefore nothing has been contracted. Reducing unstressed "have" to [@v] is not a contraction, and that's what's occurring here.
<<"Connected speech" is just a fancy way of saying "contraction".>>
Wrong. "Connected speech" refers to fluent, natural speech. You can have connected speech without using contractions.
<<By that logic, one shouldn't write "wouldn't".>>
Wrong again. "Wouldn't" is a distinct contracted form, and it is distinct from the predictable pronunciation of "would not". Compare:
1. I wouldn't do that. [aI wUdn=t "du: D{t]
2. I would not do that. [aI wUd nAt "du: D{t]
and:
1. I would've done that. [aI wUd @v "dVn D{t]
2. I would have done that. [aI wUd @v "dVn D{t]
Again, in the first case we have a distinct contracted pronunciation, and in the second case we do not.
As I said above, I doubt that many people are saying a truly monosyllabic [hUr\] analagous to "we're" or "they're".
<<If I'm transcribing speech, and someone says "would've", I'll write it "would've".>>
But there's no difference between saying *"would've" and saying "would have". For example, compare:
1. "I've done that" [aIv "dVn D{t]
2. "The men have done that" [D@ mEn @v "dVn D{t]
In 1., there's a legitimate contraction because "I've" is pronounced as a monosyllable. In 2., "have" would be read by any English speaker as [@v]; there's no possible way that you could have a monosyllable "men've" [mEnv]. This demonstrates that the contraction is used when the predictable reduced pronunciation [@v] is not used. In fact, compare:
1. "I've done that" [aIv "dVn D{t]
2. "I have done that" [aI @v "dVn D{t]
This demonstrates the difference between the regular reduced form [@v] and the contracted form, [v]. And in the case of "would have", it is the predictable reduced form [@v] that is used, *not* the contracted form [v]. No English speaker would pronounce a monosyllable [wUdv], so therefore the contraction serves absolutely no purpose. Or to put it another way, there's a difference in pronunciation between:
1. "I've done that"
2. "I have done that"
But there is no difference in pronunciation between:
1. "I would've done that."
2. "I would have done that."
What I'm trying to show is that the supposed "contracted" form is pronounced identical to the uncontracted form, so therefore nothing has been contracted. Reducing unstressed "have" to [@v] is not a contraction, and that's what's occurring here.
<<"Connected speech" is just a fancy way of saying "contraction".>>
Wrong. "Connected speech" refers to fluent, natural speech. You can have connected speech without using contractions.
<<By that logic, one shouldn't write "wouldn't".>>
Wrong again. "Wouldn't" is a distinct contracted form, and it is distinct from the predictable pronunciation of "would not". Compare:
1. I wouldn't do that. [aI wUdn=t "du: D{t]
2. I would not do that. [aI wUd nAt "du: D{t]
and:
1. I would've done that. [aI wUd @v "dVn D{t]
2. I would have done that. [aI wUd @v "dVn D{t]
Again, in the first case we have a distinct contracted pronunciation, and in the second case we do not.
In all honestly, I'm not sure if I buy that kind of analysis all such. For starters, I myself am very much inclined to throw out the entire idea of "contractions" to begin with (and especially the sense of such that one is taught in school). Rather, I am inclined to separate the matter into two separate matters (which, yes, I assume you know, but which I am illustrating here for the sake of the reader):
1) Free morphemes (aka "words") versus clitics
Mind that the above itself actually has nothing at all to do with whether something would be written down as a separate word or not in conventional transcriptions of speech. Rather it is simply a matter of whether a word receives a primary stress accent or not. This is important, because many things that are typically thought of as "words" really only receive any stress accent at all if they come at the beginning of an utterance. So hence, many such forms actually can participate in phonological phenomena that only occur inside words, as they actually act more like part of the word they have tacked themselves onto.
2) Allomorphy
Allomorphy is just variation in the forms of words, both through free variation and through variation conditional upon environment. The important thing about this is that it can apply to any morpheme, be it free or bound. Hence one can apply this to both free words and clitics, and not just one of the two.
The reason why all this is important is whether one "word" is tacked onto another is a completely separate matter from whether said "word" can show up with multiple forms dependent on environment. Hence I really do not see the value in even speaking of "contractions" in the first place, which to me at least is just a subcategory of the two together, specifically a clitic form of a morpheme which differs from the default free form in a non-trivial manner.
One note here - you really should not use "-n't" versus "not" as an example for this kind of thing, as "-n't" patterns quite clearly in English as an inflection and not a clitic; it undergoes movement patterns typical of the former and not the latter, sometimes results in unpredictable stem changes, and has holes in its distribution like one sees with inflections at times but not clitics. This is a whole nother subject unto itself, but I just wanted to point such out right now.
Also, by the way, it is hard to say that these kinds of things are generally consistent in English; hell, my own dialect differs a good but on many of the examples above, and actually does have a monosyllabic "who're" [ˈhuːʁ] - heh.
1) Free morphemes (aka "words") versus clitics
Mind that the above itself actually has nothing at all to do with whether something would be written down as a separate word or not in conventional transcriptions of speech. Rather it is simply a matter of whether a word receives a primary stress accent or not. This is important, because many things that are typically thought of as "words" really only receive any stress accent at all if they come at the beginning of an utterance. So hence, many such forms actually can participate in phonological phenomena that only occur inside words, as they actually act more like part of the word they have tacked themselves onto.
2) Allomorphy
Allomorphy is just variation in the forms of words, both through free variation and through variation conditional upon environment. The important thing about this is that it can apply to any morpheme, be it free or bound. Hence one can apply this to both free words and clitics, and not just one of the two.
The reason why all this is important is whether one "word" is tacked onto another is a completely separate matter from whether said "word" can show up with multiple forms dependent on environment. Hence I really do not see the value in even speaking of "contractions" in the first place, which to me at least is just a subcategory of the two together, specifically a clitic form of a morpheme which differs from the default free form in a non-trivial manner.
One note here - you really should not use "-n't" versus "not" as an example for this kind of thing, as "-n't" patterns quite clearly in English as an inflection and not a clitic; it undergoes movement patterns typical of the former and not the latter, sometimes results in unpredictable stem changes, and has holes in its distribution like one sees with inflections at times but not clitics. This is a whole nother subject unto itself, but I just wanted to point such out right now.
Also, by the way, it is hard to say that these kinds of things are generally consistent in English; hell, my own dialect differs a good but on many of the examples above, and actually does have a monosyllabic "who're" [ˈhuːʁ] - heh.
Yeah, on reflection, I started to suspect that monosyllabic "who're" probably does occur.
I myself tend to try to avoid thinking much about cliticization patterns in English dialects, as even in rather similar dialects I somehow suspect that they are really all over the place when one actually thinks about how people *really* speak (especially considering the wide range of degrees of register and emphasis one may encounter). I can go on and on about my own dialect, but how useful is that, especially considering its being rather atypical to begin with as NAE dialects go...
Whether you SEE "who're" in print ever is a good question -- I don't think I have -- but people certainly SAY it all the time. I knew exactly what it was and how to say it as soon as I saw it, and it sounded perfectly natural to me. I think we can all roll it trippingly off the tongue in plenty of example sentences. And it sounds nothing like "whore" in my dialect, although it would in others.
<<As I said above, I doubt that many people are saying a truly monosyllabic [hUr\] analagous to "we're" or "they're". >>
And as //I// said above, if all contractions have to be monosyllabic, then one should not write “wouldn’t”.
<<But there's no difference between saying *"would've" and saying "would have". >>
Except, of course, for the fact that there is. There are three distinct ways of saying this: “would have” “would ‘ave”, and “would of”. Perhaps they don’t all exist in your dialect, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
<< In 2., "have" would be read by any English speaker as [@v]; >>
So, I’m not an English speaker, then? And neither is this guy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dN823dUu6KA
“So if you have watched my previous videos, you know how Fox News, the McCain campaign, and the Drudge report have worked together…”
Not “report’ve”, but “report have”.
<<Wrong. "Connected speech" refers to fluent, natural speech. You can have connected speech without using contractions.>>
The distinction is arbitrary. Once a contraction reaches an arbitrary level of commonality, it’s considered to be just normal speech, rather than a contraction. So in Cockney, “I‘ave to go” is considered normal speech, while in SAE it’s considered to be a contraction.
<<Wrong again. "Wouldn't" is a distinct contracted form, and it is distinct from the predictable pronunciation of "would not".>>
Okay, just to be clear, when I say “by that logic”, I mean “by that logic”, not “by some other line of logic that you have presented elsewhere”. You claimed that the contraction “would’ve” serves no purpose BECAUSE it’s not pronounced as one syllable. So, according to THAT LOGIC, “wouldn’t” serves no purpose, because IT is not not one syllable. So you have two claims: “would’ve” is polysyllabic, and it’s not a distinct form. The first is irrelevant, and the second is false.
And as //I// said above, if all contractions have to be monosyllabic, then one should not write “wouldn’t”.
<<But there's no difference between saying *"would've" and saying "would have". >>
Except, of course, for the fact that there is. There are three distinct ways of saying this: “would have” “would ‘ave”, and “would of”. Perhaps they don’t all exist in your dialect, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
<< In 2., "have" would be read by any English speaker as [@v]; >>
So, I’m not an English speaker, then? And neither is this guy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dN823dUu6KA
“So if you have watched my previous videos, you know how Fox News, the McCain campaign, and the Drudge report have worked together…”
Not “report’ve”, but “report have”.
<<Wrong. "Connected speech" refers to fluent, natural speech. You can have connected speech without using contractions.>>
The distinction is arbitrary. Once a contraction reaches an arbitrary level of commonality, it’s considered to be just normal speech, rather than a contraction. So in Cockney, “I‘ave to go” is considered normal speech, while in SAE it’s considered to be a contraction.
<<Wrong again. "Wouldn't" is a distinct contracted form, and it is distinct from the predictable pronunciation of "would not".>>
Okay, just to be clear, when I say “by that logic”, I mean “by that logic”, not “by some other line of logic that you have presented elsewhere”. You claimed that the contraction “would’ve” serves no purpose BECAUSE it’s not pronounced as one syllable. So, according to THAT LOGIC, “wouldn’t” serves no purpose, because IT is not not one syllable. So you have two claims: “would’ve” is polysyllabic, and it’s not a distinct form. The first is irrelevant, and the second is false.
The only place I can see possibly using it is in a clause, like: Those of you who're thinking of leaving had better think again."
Otherwise, I agree that it looks too much like 'whore'.
Otherwise, I agree that it looks too much like 'whore'.
I'm sorry, Travis, for continuing this weird contraction argument, but here goes:
<<And as //I// said above, if all contractions have to be monosyllabic, then one should not write “wouldn’t”.>>
I didn't say that all contractions have to be monosyllabic. Contractions have to be shorter (i.e. more reduced) than the uncontracted forms. Or in simpler terms, they have to be *distinct* from the uncontracted forms. Now, if you pronounce a truly monosyllabic "who're" ["hur\], then you would be justified in using a contraction, because it's shorter than the unreduced "who are" [(h)u @`]. But if you use the bisyllabic [(h)u @`], then you shouldn't write it as "who're" because the orthographic contraction serves no purpose.
"Wouldn't" is a legitimate contraction (orthographically) because it is quite distinct from the predictable pronunciation of "would not".
<<Except, of course, for the fact that there is. There are three distinct ways of saying this: “would have” “would ‘ave”, and “would of”. Perhaps they don’t all exist in your dialect, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.>>
You're completely off base here. *All three* of those pronunciations exist in my dialect, and *all three* are universally represented in standard written English as "would have". ("Would 'ave" I have never seen before; and "would of" is simply a morphemic reanalysis; "of" itself is a word that has full and reduced forms, so conflating "have" and "of" really doesn't serve much of a useful purpose here.) In case you're having trouble understanding this, let me clarify. Let's say that there's a line of dialogue in a novel:
"In that case, she would have done it."
Reading that line aloud, English speakers would universally pronounce the sequence as [w@4 @v] or something similar. They would not need faux-netic eye dialect spellings like "would 'ave" or "would of" to read "have" as a reduced form; it's simply the universal way that they would pronounce it. *And*, if a public figure had uttered that sentence and was quoted in print, they would spell it just the same way, "would have", and again, any native English speaker would know to pronounce "have" as a reduced form. Look up "have" in any dictionary (like this one: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/have ), and you will see that they list reduced forms among the acceptable pronunciations. So once again, there is no difference in pronunciation between these two sentences:
"She would have done it."
"She would've done it."
Both of those sentences would be prounounced *identically* by native speakers of English. "Would've" does not represent any form distinct from the usual reduced pronunciation of "would have". It is an incontrovertible fact that words like "have", "am", "are", "of", etc. are regularly read as reduced forms without any need for silly eye-dialect spellings.
<<So, I’m not an English speaker, then? And neither is this guy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dN823dUu6KA
“So if you have watched my previous videos, you know how Fox News, the McCain campaign, and the Drudge report have worked together…”
Not “report’ve”, but “report have”.>>
No, I never said you or that guy are not English speakers. In slower, more careful or more formal speech, it's quite usual for English speakers to use full (or fuller) forms in places where they would, in other circumstances, use reduced forms. What I'm saying is that a quite typical reading (probably the most common reading) of the sentence "The men have done that" would pronounce "have" as a reduced form [@v]; this would be a standard reading of the written language, and it would be nonsense if people regularly represented such readings with orthographic contractions like "men've".
<<The distinction is arbitrary. Once a contraction reaches an arbitrary level of commonality, it’s considered to be just normal speech, rather than a contraction. So in Cockney, “I‘ave to go” is considered normal speech, while in SAE it’s considered to be a contraction.>>
You're doubly wrong here. First of all: Cockney has regular dropping of [h] at the beginning of words, as a simple phonological process, so the [h]-less pronunciation of "I have to go" in Cockney would correspond both to the unreduced (with-[h]) pronunciation and to the more reduced (without-[h]) pronunciation of "I have to go" in American English. The reason why an [h]-less pronunciation of "I have to go" would be standard in Cockney isn't that it arose as a reduced form and somehow managed to become more common in Cockney than in SAE; it's because there's a regular phonological process going on, which affects all words starting with [h], and which doesn't occur in SAE. Second: the [h]-less pronunciation of "I have to go" is *not* a contraction, because in standard American English that reading requires no special eye dialect spelling; it's just one of the multiple acceptable ways to pronounce "I have to go". It's a phonological reduction, but it's not an orthographic contraction. Basically, your arguments are flawed because you're conflating phonology and orthography and you're unable to recognize that there can be more than one accepted (phonological) reading of a written sentence - i.e. that reduced forms can be used in speech without requiring contrived eye-dialect spellings. The standard reading of a page of English text (i.e. the way that a native speaker would typically pronounce it) would probably be full of reduced forms; and it is a standard part of the language that these reduced forms are regularly inferred from written words without necessitating faux-netic spellings in every case.
<<You claimed that the contraction “would’ve” serves no purpose BECAUSE it’s not pronounced as one syllable.>>
The number of syllables is circumstantial. To put it in more basic terms, "would've" serves no purpose because it does not represent a pronunciation that is distinct from the standard, regular, reduced pronunciation of "would have", as I have explained above.
<<So, according to THAT LOGIC, “wouldn’t” serves no purpose, because IT is not not one syllable.>>
"Wouldn't" does serve a purpose because it represents a pronunciation which is distinct from the predictable pronunciation of the written form "would not". I never posited a universal rule that contractions have to be monosyllabic; it just so happens that in the cases of "who're" and the (hypothetical, inutile) "would've", the pronunciation would have to be monosyllabic to justify an orthographic contraction.
<<So you have two claims: “would’ve” is polysyllabic, and it’s not a distinct form. The first is irrelevant, and the second is false.>>
The first claim *is* relevant, because it proves that a sentence "She would've done it" would be read *no differently* from the sentence "She would have done it"; and the second claim is true. In case you're still having difficulty understanding this mind-numbingly simple point, why don't you try reading aloud the following sentence, just as if you had encountered it as a line of dialogue in a novel or as a quotation in a newspaper article:
"She would have done it."
Did you use a schwa there (i.e. the reduced form [@v])? Of course you did; that's the way any English speaker would pronounce it. The alternative - to use a fuller form [{v] or [h{v] - sounds completely stilted and unnatural; I would almost go so far as to say that [@v] is the only possible pronunciation here in standard English.
And then pronounce this sentence:
"She would've done it."
It's pronounced exactly the same. The orthographic contraction serves absolutely no purpose. The two written forms are completely identical in spoken English. What you're saying, in essence, is that in order for the written form to correspond to a reduced pronunciation like [@v] or [{v], we need to use an eye dialect spelling like "'ave" or "of" in place of "have". And what I'm saying is that this argument is complete and utter bullshit without any basis in reality.
<<And as //I// said above, if all contractions have to be monosyllabic, then one should not write “wouldn’t”.>>
I didn't say that all contractions have to be monosyllabic. Contractions have to be shorter (i.e. more reduced) than the uncontracted forms. Or in simpler terms, they have to be *distinct* from the uncontracted forms. Now, if you pronounce a truly monosyllabic "who're" ["hur\], then you would be justified in using a contraction, because it's shorter than the unreduced "who are" [(h)u @`]. But if you use the bisyllabic [(h)u @`], then you shouldn't write it as "who're" because the orthographic contraction serves no purpose.
"Wouldn't" is a legitimate contraction (orthographically) because it is quite distinct from the predictable pronunciation of "would not".
<<Except, of course, for the fact that there is. There are three distinct ways of saying this: “would have” “would ‘ave”, and “would of”. Perhaps they don’t all exist in your dialect, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.>>
You're completely off base here. *All three* of those pronunciations exist in my dialect, and *all three* are universally represented in standard written English as "would have". ("Would 'ave" I have never seen before; and "would of" is simply a morphemic reanalysis; "of" itself is a word that has full and reduced forms, so conflating "have" and "of" really doesn't serve much of a useful purpose here.) In case you're having trouble understanding this, let me clarify. Let's say that there's a line of dialogue in a novel:
"In that case, she would have done it."
Reading that line aloud, English speakers would universally pronounce the sequence as [w@4 @v] or something similar. They would not need faux-netic eye dialect spellings like "would 'ave" or "would of" to read "have" as a reduced form; it's simply the universal way that they would pronounce it. *And*, if a public figure had uttered that sentence and was quoted in print, they would spell it just the same way, "would have", and again, any native English speaker would know to pronounce "have" as a reduced form. Look up "have" in any dictionary (like this one: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/have ), and you will see that they list reduced forms among the acceptable pronunciations. So once again, there is no difference in pronunciation between these two sentences:
"She would have done it."
"She would've done it."
Both of those sentences would be prounounced *identically* by native speakers of English. "Would've" does not represent any form distinct from the usual reduced pronunciation of "would have". It is an incontrovertible fact that words like "have", "am", "are", "of", etc. are regularly read as reduced forms without any need for silly eye-dialect spellings.
<<So, I’m not an English speaker, then? And neither is this guy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dN823dUu6KA
“So if you have watched my previous videos, you know how Fox News, the McCain campaign, and the Drudge report have worked together…”
Not “report’ve”, but “report have”.>>
No, I never said you or that guy are not English speakers. In slower, more careful or more formal speech, it's quite usual for English speakers to use full (or fuller) forms in places where they would, in other circumstances, use reduced forms. What I'm saying is that a quite typical reading (probably the most common reading) of the sentence "The men have done that" would pronounce "have" as a reduced form [@v]; this would be a standard reading of the written language, and it would be nonsense if people regularly represented such readings with orthographic contractions like "men've".
<<The distinction is arbitrary. Once a contraction reaches an arbitrary level of commonality, it’s considered to be just normal speech, rather than a contraction. So in Cockney, “I‘ave to go” is considered normal speech, while in SAE it’s considered to be a contraction.>>
You're doubly wrong here. First of all: Cockney has regular dropping of [h] at the beginning of words, as a simple phonological process, so the [h]-less pronunciation of "I have to go" in Cockney would correspond both to the unreduced (with-[h]) pronunciation and to the more reduced (without-[h]) pronunciation of "I have to go" in American English. The reason why an [h]-less pronunciation of "I have to go" would be standard in Cockney isn't that it arose as a reduced form and somehow managed to become more common in Cockney than in SAE; it's because there's a regular phonological process going on, which affects all words starting with [h], and which doesn't occur in SAE. Second: the [h]-less pronunciation of "I have to go" is *not* a contraction, because in standard American English that reading requires no special eye dialect spelling; it's just one of the multiple acceptable ways to pronounce "I have to go". It's a phonological reduction, but it's not an orthographic contraction. Basically, your arguments are flawed because you're conflating phonology and orthography and you're unable to recognize that there can be more than one accepted (phonological) reading of a written sentence - i.e. that reduced forms can be used in speech without requiring contrived eye-dialect spellings. The standard reading of a page of English text (i.e. the way that a native speaker would typically pronounce it) would probably be full of reduced forms; and it is a standard part of the language that these reduced forms are regularly inferred from written words without necessitating faux-netic spellings in every case.
<<You claimed that the contraction “would’ve” serves no purpose BECAUSE it’s not pronounced as one syllable.>>
The number of syllables is circumstantial. To put it in more basic terms, "would've" serves no purpose because it does not represent a pronunciation that is distinct from the standard, regular, reduced pronunciation of "would have", as I have explained above.
<<So, according to THAT LOGIC, “wouldn’t” serves no purpose, because IT is not not one syllable.>>
"Wouldn't" does serve a purpose because it represents a pronunciation which is distinct from the predictable pronunciation of the written form "would not". I never posited a universal rule that contractions have to be monosyllabic; it just so happens that in the cases of "who're" and the (hypothetical, inutile) "would've", the pronunciation would have to be monosyllabic to justify an orthographic contraction.
<<So you have two claims: “would’ve” is polysyllabic, and it’s not a distinct form. The first is irrelevant, and the second is false.>>
The first claim *is* relevant, because it proves that a sentence "She would've done it" would be read *no differently* from the sentence "She would have done it"; and the second claim is true. In case you're still having difficulty understanding this mind-numbingly simple point, why don't you try reading aloud the following sentence, just as if you had encountered it as a line of dialogue in a novel or as a quotation in a newspaper article:
"She would have done it."
Did you use a schwa there (i.e. the reduced form [@v])? Of course you did; that's the way any English speaker would pronounce it. The alternative - to use a fuller form [{v] or [h{v] - sounds completely stilted and unnatural; I would almost go so far as to say that [@v] is the only possible pronunciation here in standard English.
And then pronounce this sentence:
"She would've done it."
It's pronounced exactly the same. The orthographic contraction serves absolutely no purpose. The two written forms are completely identical in spoken English. What you're saying, in essence, is that in order for the written form to correspond to a reduced pronunciation like [@v] or [{v], we need to use an eye dialect spelling like "'ave" or "of" in place of "have". And what I'm saying is that this argument is complete and utter bullshit without any basis in reality.